Introduction to game analysis
Bibliography
Fernández-Vara, Clara. Introduction to Game Analysis. Second edition. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019.
Abstract
“This accessible textbook gives students the tools they need to analyze games using strategies borrowed from textual analysis. As the field of game studies grows, videogame writing is evolving from the mere evaluation of gameplay, graphics, sound, and replayablity, to more reflective writing that manages to convey the complexity of a game and the way it is played in a cultural context. Clara Fernández-Vara’s concise primer provides readers with instruction on the basic building blocks of game analysis—examination of context, content and reception, and formal qualities—as well as the vocabulary necessary for talking about videogames’ distinguishing characteristics. Examples are drawn from a range of games, both digital and non-digital—from Bioshock and World of Warcraft to Monopoly—and the book provides a variety of exercises and sample analyses, as well as a comprehensive ludography and glossary. In this second edition of the popular textbook, Fernández-Vara brings the book firmly up-to-date, pulling in fresh examples from ground-breaking new works in this dynamic field. Introduction to Game Analysis remains a unique practical tool for students who want to become more fluent writers and critics of not just video games, but digital media overall”—
Notes
Adrian’s notes on Introduction to Game Analysis
Exercises
- What type of player are you p. 29
- Walk-through preparing for the analysis p. 50
- Mapping game-play p. 62
- Genre History p. 70
- Platform Comparison p. 74
- What makes a game hardcore p. 79
- How many players can play this game p. 93
- Getting to the core of how to play a game p. 97
- Counting the verbs (game mechanics) p. 99
- What makes a games story-driven p. 109
- Player-watching p. 111
- Learning from Bad Games p. 121
- Matching the verbs with the fictional world p. 124
- Simulation vs. representation p. 130
- Serious games p. 133
- How “intuitive” are the controls? p. 145
- Hard games are fun too p. 148
- Goal structure p. 154
- Wordless tutorials p. 160
- Examine moral choices p. 163
- Fan remakes p. 167
- Analyzing the analysis p. 178
- Write a retro review p. 187
- Key games p. 193
- Expert players in inline games p. 199
- Rewriting the analysis p- 215
Boxes
- Walkthrough on how to prepare to analyze a game p. 50
- Imitating bad writing p. 187
- Close reading p. 200
- Defining your terms p. 205
1 Introduction
The author Clara Fernández-Vara proposes to read and analyze video games like texts. This brings Barthes Mythologies to mind, which she later in the text confirms.
Go to annotation “provides a classical example of how the concept of text can be applied to activities and artifacts that may also be a form of human expression” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 6)
The concept of text can be applied to the things themselves, to the things surrounding the things (paratexts), to the things reading the things, and so forth.
Can a video game be understood as a way of communication? Yes, and they’re also artifacts that hold values and ideas, which the game’s players interact with. Textual analysis uses inductive reasoning to produce general theories.
This book tries to broaden the discourse and produce a canon of of works related to game studies. Reasons on p.11.
- structural approach: finding patterns in design, topics, aesthetics, etc
- post-structural: concentrating on the process of sense-making while playing, the context and differences
Building blocks and areas of game analysis
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Context
- Circumstances of play and production
- Paratexts
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Game Overview
- Content
- Audience
- Meaning
- Affordances
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Formal Aspects
- Construction
- Rules, controls
- Design, visual styles, etc
- Formalism/Structuralism
Caillois disinguishes two different styles of play: ludus and paidia. Play that is restricted through rules versus spontaneous improvisation and expression.
Limit the scope of the analysis
Go to annotation “What do I want to learn from the game? What is the field of study that I’m approaching it from? Who am I talking to? What do they know about games? What are the aspects of the game that are going to be relevant to the analysis?” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 18)
These are some general but important questions before starting an analysis.
2 Preparing for the Analysis
- estimate how much time you spend on the mayor phases: playing, reading, writing, rewriting
- be source-critical and ensure they’re of good quality
Playing the game critically <3
- choose how to play the game, methodical-wise
- how much playing has to be done for the playing to be “finished”
- critical distance is hard to maintain as a player/writer
- we can also mistake ourselves for an “ideal” (abstract”) player
- phenomenology’s bracketing method can help: self-examination
- game capital is the knowledge we can aquire about games and playing them; cheats and walkthroughs and similar things count amongst that capital
- game capital belong to the circumstances of play
Gathering information about the game
Since no cultural artifact is created and encountered in the void, the context of a game should also be analyzed.
- find what already has been written on the game
- be selective according to the goals (audience, question) you set out
- be source-critical
Possible context resources might include:
- game box and manuals
- official websites
- the cabinet of arcade machines
- game reviews (vs. reception, retro reviews); don’t forget print
- academic articles; might be text on genre that includes reference to game
- press release and advertisements in print and other media (tv)
- newspaper articles
- developer diaries, talks and interviews
- development documentation
- design documents and development files
- postmortems
It would be helpful to categorize this resources a bit towards research goals.
Another important source in the analysis of games is resorting to pre-existing theories to understand games, as in borrowing theory from other media.
The original system that a game was intended to be played on might be a crucial part of the context analysis (see Duck Hunt and it’s gun-controller). We also might need access to different versions of a game (dev version, prod version, emulated, etc).
Secondary sources
Sometimes games might be (or include) a one-time or limited event. To study these, context becomes essential. Always play the game and if that is not possible, reconstruct as much as possible through it’s paratexts.
- Some analysis might need to include player data
- experiential aspects of a video game are essential in order to understand it; spoilers might be in the way of that, but sometimes it will be important to make a point
3 Areas of Analysis
Go to annotation “Providing the context helps us situate the game historically, culturally, socially, and economically. Videogames are the product of their time, therefore learning about the socio-cultural and industrial environment in which they were produced is crucial to understand them.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 56)
Go to annotation “An overview of the game’s main defining elements helps readers situate themselves by explaining briefly what the game is about. This section is common to all types of analysis, as we will see in Chapter 6, although focusing exclusively on the content may be the subject of some specific models of journalistic game reviews, which are closer to consumer reports. By taking into account how the game was played, appropriated, and transformed by the community, the analysis also acknowledges that games are a human activity, not merely a set of rules or code in a computer.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 56)
“The formal qualities of the game are not limited to technical specifications, or a breakdown of specific design features that may be typical of some game reviews. An analysis of the formal aspects must inquire how they work, hypothesize why they are there, and most importantly, how they relate to the player’s experience.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 56)
Beware of intentional fallacy
Go to annotation “Intentional fallacy is first assuming that one can figure out what the author was thinking when creating a work, then believing that this presupposed intention is the key to deciding the value and meaning of the work.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 57)
Context
Building Blocks. The author includes a batch of questions for every building block, that can be used as starting points for inquiries.
- context inside the game; state what you were focusing on within the game (levels, play modes, etc); see gameplay map, p. 62
- production team
- game genre; defined by and associated through Go to annotation “formal features and cultural assumptions” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 67), conventions, play context, fictions used in world building,
- technological context; ie platform (studies)
- socio-historical context; have a look at the dates, such as development, release and when played
- economic context
- audience; linked to formal analysis as well as paratexts
- relations to other media
Notes
Technological Context
Go to annotation “A platform provides a set of limitations, mainly technological, that developers can embrace or work around.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 72)
That is a bit the part that I’m currently interested in. So maybe there is a link to platform studies, as mentioned in the beginning of the sub-chapter on technological context.
Go to annotation “Understanding the platform also helps determine whether a specific aesthetic of the game is a result of the technology or a choice of the developers.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 73)
It might seem, that there is already some work done on this. But how deep? And could there be a question or thesis hidden here?
Game Overview
What makes a game “that” game, identifying it and make clear what sets it appart from other games. It’s mainly descriptive, close to reports and personal accounts of gameplay.
- number of players and how they interact; vs versus co; against players, against the game
- rules and goals of the game/game modes
- game mechanics
- spaces of the game
- fictional world of the game; setting for the story
- story; of the world, of the player; explicit or implicit (ie Wipeout); pre-set or emergent
- gameplay experience
- game communities
Notes
Go to annotation “While the rules can dictate how the game works, the mechanics refer to the rules that establish how the player participates in the game.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 98)
Michael Nitsche on spaces
Go to annotation “rule-based space: “defined by the mathematical rules that set, for example, physics, sounds, AI, and game level architecture”;” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 100)
Go to annotation “mediated space: “defined by the presentation, which is the space of the image plane and the use of this image including the cinematic form of presentation”;” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 101)
Go to annotation “fictional space: “that lives in the imagination, in other words, the space ‘imagined’ by players from their comprehension of the available images”;” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 101)
Go to annotation “play space: “meaning space of the play, which includes the player and the videogame hardware”;” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 101)
Go to annotation “social space: “defined by interaction with others, meaning the game space of other players affected (e.g. in a multiplayer title).”” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 101)
Go to annotation “The rules that define how objects move in the world indicate the cardinality of the game world; whereas the rules that refer to the movement player mechanics define the cardinality of gameplay.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 102)
Formal Elements
Zoom into the game, have a close reading on how it is made, and how these details relate to the player and the player experience.
- rules of the world;
- diegetic vs. extradiegetic rules;
- save games;
- relationship between rules and the fictional world;
- values and procedural rhetoric;
- procedural content vs. hard-coded content;
- game dynamics;
- the gap between the player and the game: mediation;
- control schemes and peripherals;
- difficulty levels/game balance;
- representation (visual design, sound design, and music);
- rule-driven vs. goal-driven games;
- levels and level design;
- choice design;
- cheats/mods/hacks/bugs.
Notes
There is a lot of overlapping in the building blocks to game over view and formal elements, especially concerning the rules, mechanics and the world of the game. The “verbs” of a game appear often, indicating the importance of looking at the interactive part.
Go to annotation “Design Assessment Framework proposed by Mitgutsch and Alvarado” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 133)
“• Purpose: What is the goal of the game? What is it trying to achieve? What values does it try to transmit?
• Content and information: What is the information that the game is trying to get across? What is the game trying to teach?
• Game mechanics: What are the rules of the game? What are the main verbs of the game? How hard/difficult is it?
• Fiction and narrative: What is the fictional world of the game? How does the context relate to the content it wants to get across?
• Aesthetics and graphics: How does the game set up a tone and environment to the player?
• Framing: Who is the game intended for? How much are they supposed to know about games before playing?
• Cohesiveness: Can we consider the game as using procedural rhetoric? Are the values that the game tries to convey integrated in the mechanics? Does the audience it is intended for actually play this type of game?” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 134)
The discussion of emergence versus progression (rule- vs goal-driven gameplay) was difficult to follow at first, but seems very interesting.
6 Writing the Analysis
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Literature Review
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Thesis statement (max two sentences)
Go to annotation “A good thesis statement is going to take you a long way, because the rest of the analysis is providing arguments and evidence to support it.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 175)
-
Framing the discussion (audience)
Example analysis:
- Context
- Game overview
- Thesis statement
- Supporting discussion
- Application of theories to explain the game
- Representation
- Conclusion
Game summary:
- Context: Production team
- Context: Game genre
- Overview: Number of players
- Overview: Description of gameplay
- Overview: Gameplay experience
- Optional Overview: Story
- Optional Overview: Fictional Story
- Optional Formal: Difficulty
- Optional Formal: Control schemes
- Optional Formal: Representation
Historical analysis
- Tech context
- Socio-historical context
- Economic context
A historical Go to annotation “analysis should give a diachronic sense, i.e., reflecting changes through time” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 190)
“How does the game reflect the affordances of the technology it uses?
How is the game an artifact that demonstrates the ideology and cultural concerns of the time?
How does the game present a virtual recreation of a historical environment? How do marketing representations condition the way that the game is received?” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 190)
Layers of technology:
Go to annotation “paying special attention to how the game uses technology, breaking it down in five layers, from the most material to the most external—the platform, the game code, the game form (how it plays), the interface, and the reception and operation.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 192)
In a historical analysis you could for for example on the following: production context, reception, platform, or evolution.
Interpretative Analysis
Go to annotation “In a way, almost any analysis of a game is going to be an interpretation of what it is about;” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 207)
Go to annotation “This type of analysis mostly resorts to the blocks in the formal qualities area; it is predominantly a formal analysis in which we examine how the formal qualities may point to socio-cultural concepts and events, or may construe a message, contributing to a coherent concept that explains the game. In some cases, it is always good to ground our interpretation with building blocks belonging to the context area to avoid unfounded interpretations.” (Fernández-Vara, 2014, p. 208)
7 Wrapping things up
- reread
- rewrite
- conclusion
The whys and wherefores of game analysis — Preparing for the analysis — Areas of analysis 1: context — Areas of analysis 2: game overview — Areas of analysis 3: formal elements — Writing the analysis — Wrapping things up